


Mr. Wednesday on a Thursday

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Series: Queering American Gods (Dysphoria) [3]
Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman, Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Dysphoria, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Gender Issues, Genderbending, Identity, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Missing Scene, Murder, One of My Favorites, Queer Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 20:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1954368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mr. Wednesday meets Thor in New York City.  A missing scene from American Gods with some lesser-known Norse lore flare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mr. Wednesday on a Thursday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KieranTheWerewolf42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KieranTheWerewolf42/gifts).



The mead sloshes in Thor’s glass, a present from Odin. Odin, his successor. Just as he succeeded Tyr, as they’re calling him these days. They’re all here, still. For now. Thor knows what’s coming. No amount of mead or soma is going to save him.

“Do you know,” Thor says, drunken and sloppy and knocking back the drink like shots of whiskey, and Odin doesn’t stop him. “Do you know what anglicized name I picked for dealing with my constituents in the neighborhood?” he asks.

“You picked a new name?”

“Hell yes, I did. Lots of immigrants are doing it these days. Something easier. Less inclined to get you mocked.”

“Let’s have it, then.”

“I moved from LA once that damnable comic broke loose and I changed my name. I changed it to Steve. Do you know what that does to a person?”

Odin raised an eyebrow and responded gruffly, “I might have some idea.”

“Tell you what it does. I’m ready to go.”

“I know you are. But--”

“Are you going to stand in my way? They may not know the lore, but we do.”

“We’re stronger together,” Odin said, now much softer.

“They don’t even know. God encompasses all things. Not just the fun things. Not just the Hollywood things, the age-appropriate things, the watered down shit.”

Odin nods, not meek, in control, but recognizing what is happening here.

“Tyr and I, we took a back seat. We were tired. We gave it to you,”

“Yes, and I very much appreciate your position.”

“So now I’m...Steve?”

“Hey. I didn’t exactly weigh in on the decision. It’s not my place. But I would have told you not to do it.”

“I’m going crazy. I don’t even feel like me anymore.”

“Have you met that girl yet? The new one--I met her hounding a support group for our people. You’d know the one instantly.

“Shit, you mean Dysphoria? She’s worse than Media,” Thor growls..

“I know she is.”

“She gets people killed.”

“And I don’t like the way you’re talking right now. Are you falling apart? Over this Steve thing?”

“Little bit.”

“Thor, be careful. Maybe you shouldn’t drink this much.”

Thor roars. He is suddenly three times his size. “I WILL BE THE JUDGE OF MY OWN LIFE.”

“Yes. Yes, you will. Do you want me to-- Listen, I don’t want to leave with you like this. You’re drunk. Do you want...a rest?”

“A rest?”

“Maybe a vacation. Leave New York for a while. Take a plane trip back home. Plenty of Thors there, you’d blend right in.”

“Do you think it’s that easy?”

The frank, gruff exterior is back on Odin’s face. “No. Of course not. A man can have pipe dreams. I don’t like where this is going.”

“You wanted to lead this age… Now you can.”

A wind as bitter as any from home began to blow in the apartment and Odin couldn’t keep his seat.

“Go. And if you see Dysphoria...you can kill her too. With your bare hands. You can dedicate the kill to Steve, if you like, or me, I don’t care, it’s only one kill, won’t do much. You won, One-Eye. This mess is yours.”

Odin tumbles out of the apartment and down the stairs, bitter wind biting at his heels. From inside the brownstone he can hear the thunder.

He never sees Thor again.

*~*~*

He goes back to the support group. A group he could easily lead, if anyone knew anything about what he actually stood for, these days. How sometimes it’s terrible to stay in the skin of Mr. Wednesday. How the title chafes him. How once he had convinced Freyja to let him live as others live, not the god of war and death anymore but of poetry and magic and when he lived on that side of the spectrum he felt free and light and even sometimes soft. This was not the Odin that was written about these days. Known, but not written of, not celebrated, not understood.

He remembers the trick Freyja had taught him and he slips into the meeting under the cloak of androgyny. He is not Mr. Wednesday today. Mr. Wednesday has seen what happened to Thor, has felt the elder god blip out of time and knows.. He doesn’t want to be Mr. Wednesday again for a very long time.

That bitch is leading the meeting. She actually has the audacity to lead the meeting. His people, the misfits and queers, the transgender folk of New York, the ones seeking community, stare up at her vacantly, lost.

“Today we’re going to discuss gender dysphoria. How many of you struggle with this on a daily basis?”

The crowd looks down, they look away, and that bitch smiles smugly. He sees it. Then he looks at the time. He will not make their meeting a bloodbath. He thinks, at first, he’ll give her the length of the meeting. 

But he stares her down. “It looks like most of us are uncomfortable with that topic right now,” Odin says, not in his usual Old Man growl but in the voice Freyja had given him all those many moons ago. It could still command an audience. The whole room turns to look at him.

“Not, you understand, that it isn’t a problem, but I don’t think you should force your group members through trauma. I don’t know. It may just be. Me.”

Now it’s her turn to look away. Because yes. Odin has been at this God business quite a lot longer than she has, with no thanks to be given to the people who had medicalized her and given her power within Big Pharma.

He is going to take her down.

Quietly, in the back alley, and there won’t be a body, because she is a construct, she is a tool of The Man. She is real, yes, but not as real as Odin is in any form. She is breathing her last.

She is about to die the death of a new god.

Odin readies the stick from Yggdrasil as she steps down from the podium and gives her one of his most potent come hither looks.

They leave together and the collective sigh of relief as she leaves the safe haven of the meeting is palpable through the doorway.

“You seem new here,” came the murmur from Odin, soft and sultry and wicked. “Care for me to show you a night on the town? My treat, my sweet.”

The New Gods fell for this every time. When he wanted them to.

In the alley behind the building, he makes short work of her. As he raises the stick pulled from the branch of Yggdrasil that comes closest these days to representing Midgard, he does as he was asked, as he always would have done anyway.

“I dedicate this battle to Thor.”

**Author's Note:**

> For any and all of my series I will take prompts. Currently I have notes 3 thick deep for Queering American Gods and 2 fic deep for my episodic ficlets.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Hammered](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10846074) by [roguefaerie (samidha)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie)




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